Top 500 Private Companies Valuation at USD 2.3 Trn, Around 71% of India GDP

The top 500 private sector enterprises, led by Reliance Industries, are worth USD 2.8 trillion, or Rs 231 lakh crore. This is comparable to 71% of the country's GDP and more than the combined GDP of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Mumbai:Led by Reliance Industries, the top 500 private sector companies are valued at USD 2.8 trillion or Rs 231 lakh crore, which is more than the combined GDP of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Singapore, and also equivalent to 71 per cent of the nation's GDP, according to a report. Reliance Industries continues to retain the top slot for the third year in a row with a value of Rs 15.65 lakh crore and leads the No 2, which is TCS, by at least Rs 3 lakh crore, the report stated.

Thanks to the merger of HDFC twins, HDFC Bank has become the third most valued company surpassing Rs 10 lakh crore market capitalization, according to a Hurun India-Axis Bank 2023 most valued companies list. These companies have recorded 13 per cent sales growth in the year and had combined sales of USD 952 billion, which is again more than a quarter of the national GDP which is likely to close the current fiscal at USD 3.9 trillion, Anas Rahman Junaid, the managing director of Hurun India said.

Amitabh Chaudhry, the managing director of Axis Bank, said, these 500 companies employ 1.3 per cent or over 70 lakh of the workforce and 52 in the list are less than a decade old and the oldest is the 235-year-old EID-Parry. The top 500 private sector companies list (both listed and unlisted) excludes public sector as well as foreign companies, has a cumulative value of USD 2.8 trillion or Rs 231 lakh crore which is more than the combined GDP of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Singapore, the report said on Monday.

The list is led by Reliance with a value of Rs 15.6 lakh crore (as of October 2023), followed by Tata Consultancy Services at Rs 12.4 lakh crore and HDFC Bank with Rs 11.3 lakh crore. Jio Financial Services is ranked 28th in the list and HCL Technologies and Kotak Mahindra Bank have returned to the top 10 list in the 2023 edition.

These 500 companies employ 70 lakh people, with an average of 15,211 employees per organization, 437 of them have women on their boards and 179 of them are led by professional CEOs. Of these, 342 companies saw an increase in value compared to 310 companies in 2022 with 18 of them doubling during the year and three of them-- HDFC Bank, Larsen & Toubro and ITC-- saw growing by Rs 1 lakh crore.

More than half in the list registered a value growth of over Rs 1,000 crore over 2022 of which 75 added more than Rs 10,000 crore. The top value creators of the year in terms of percentage are Suzlon Energy, which registered a value growth of 436, followed by Jindal Stainless and JSW Infrastructure which grew by almost five and four times respectively over 2022, Megha Engineering (150), manufacturing services startup Zetwerk (100) and Bennet Coleman (100).

On the other hand vaccine maker Serum Institute saw its value fall by 13 per cent to Rs 1.9 lakh crore but continues to be the most valuable unlisted company in the country. As much as 44 per cent of the companies in the list provide services and the rest 56 per cent sell physical products and 66 per cent of them are consumer-facing, 34 per cent are B2B.

Of the 500 companies, 61 are debutants, led by 16 from the industrial products, and 10 from the financial services segment. Some of the notable listed new entrants include Inox Wind, RR Kabel, Welspun Corp and the main unlisted new entrants are Incred Finance and Bengaluru-based bootstrapped gaming startup Gameskraft. The cumulative value of these new entrants is Rs 7.5 lakh crore.

The top 500 companies come from 44 cities, led by Mumbai (156), Bengaluru (59) and New Delhi (39). These top three cities contributed 254 entrants, up from 264 in the 2022 list. Financial services, healthcare and consumer goods companies lead the pack with 76, 58 and 38 respectively.

Services sector was the largest value creator led by Info Edge (ranked 88), which grew by 4.5 times and the cumulative value of these services sector companies grew by 235.1 per cent.

Due to the funding winter, startups in the list cumulatively lost Rs 4 lakh crore, led by Byjus, Dealshare, and Pharmeasy. Yet the year saw the cumulative value of the six listed unicorns gaining Rs 62,837 crore, as against a valuation loss of Rs 1,66,013 crore in 2022. With a value of USD 1.1 billion, Incred Finance is the newest unicorn to debut in the list. Similarly, with a cumulative loss of Rs 5,75,234 crore, 10 companies from the retail sector dropped out of the list.